Czech Film Research Articles

The Shadow of the Film Monuments. Canonisation of the Czechoslovak New Wave as a Discursive Operation

The Czechoslovak New Wave represents an important chapter in the history of Central European cinema, and the body of films produced in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s is deservedly considered part of both national and European cultural heritage. This essay draws on the notion that the canon of the New Wave has established itself as a myth, obscuring the visibility of the newer Czech film production. Searching for the roots of the discursive nature of this canon, it finds it in a synergy of two opposing cultures. While the conservative communist power compiled the index of films associated with the 1960s reform process in order to stop their circulation, the dissenting community incorporated the same canon as a part of its collision with that power, a collision which manifested among others in the field of language. The transition of Czech cinema in the 1990s brought the Czechoslovak New Wave back to the spotlight, yet previous rhetorical use of this canon deepened the confusion between the discursive and the aesthetic and affirmed it as an unequivocal national monument. Exploring these tensions, I conclude that a new reading of the Czechoslovak New Wave heritage might be needed to make way for newer canons of films experimenting with different aesthetic and production approaches.

Český filmový průmysl a svět literatury 1919-1945

Český filmový průmysl a svět literatury 1919-1945

Romani music in Czech film after 1989, specifically between 1993 and 2017

Romani music in Czech film after 1989, specifically between 1993 and 2017

Pivo v českém filmu : formální a sémantická analýza

The text shows how beer was depicted in selected Czech films (Adéla ještě nevečeřela [Adela Has Not Had Her Supper Yet], Postřižiny [Cutting It Short], Schmitke [Schmitke], Díra u Hanušovic [Nowhere in Moravia] and Mistři [Champions]). It focuses on the role of beer and the cinematic means used to portray it. The formal analysis of beer scenes allows us to follow the less obvious construction of the communicated content of individual films and trace their affectivity and effect on the human senses. Since beer is perceived as the Czech national drink, the analysis also reveals the approaches of filmmakers to the image of Czech identity, which have changed significantly over time (and the official direction of cinema).

‘I don’t care if it’s the Third World War’: Czech cinemagoers during the COVID-19 pandemic

The article focuses on the changes of Czech film viewers’ attitudes to cinemagoing during the COVID-19 pandemic. It presents an analysis of three focus group discussions performed in November 2021 with Czech film viewers and describes differing reactions to the pandemic in terms of people’s cinemagoing practices. It concludes that only enthusiastic film viewers with more extensive stocks of film-related knowledge remained faithful cinemagoers during the pandemic, whereas others were more difficult to attract back to cinemas. Some viewers expressed various levels of concerns and fears related to the pandemic, others expressed opposition to mask mandates, a portion of the Czech population was even annoyed by both. Furthermore, rising prices of cinema tickets were mentioned among reasons why people stopped going to cinemas or attended them less frequently. However, cinemagoing is an activity connected to various social interactions and other consumption activities, which makes it an important part of people’s lives and, as recent data on cinemagoing suggest, most viewers are likely return to cinemas, despite the uncertain situation.

HBO’s the Sleepers: How Spy Genre and Transnational Co-Production Challenged the Memory of Communism in the Czech Republic

This study centers on the problem of transposition of historical reality into the artistic form. Using the example of HBO Europe’s Czech six-part drama Bez vědomí (The Sleepers, 2019), I would like to discuss how the transnational co-production, the effort to attract international audiences, and the selected genre influenced the portrayal of the past. In the context of Czech audiovisual production, the series represents a rather exceptional example. First, it reflects on the period around the Velvet Revolution, which has not been the focus of many Czech films or TV series. It is set in late 1980s Prague, and captures the time of political and societal changes that resulted in the collapse of the communist regime. Secondly, the series uses the spy genre, which is also unique in local production. Drawing from film and TV studies and from memory studies, I will explore the concept of transnational memory in relation to HBO’s original production. In particular, however, I would like to focus on the formative role of the genre and argue that the choice of the genre in itself contributes to challenging the prevailing narratives and already established interpretations of the past.

Commodifying postsocialist cinema: filmmakers and the privatization of the Polish and Czech film industry after 1989

ABSTRACT The state’s efforts at privatization after the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe often met with disapproval from cultural producers, who worried that their form of cultural production (often understood by them as “art” rather than “commodity”) required state patronage to survive. This paper examines the case of cinema in the Czech Republic and Poland. Using contemporary press sources, it traces how filmmakers responded to the new prominence of commercial cinema and their often-perceived loss of prestige and status of “autonomous artists”. Both the creative outputs and the discourse of filmmakers illustrate the changing values attached to the free market and to the purpose of cultural production in a market economy during transformation. Following a generational story, the paper establishes similarities between the discourse of different age groups of filmmakers in both countries; but at the same time, it accounts for the diverging acceptance of marketization by outlining country-specific differences: filmmakers searched for a language to critique or to affirm the transformation, their stance largely dependent on the extent to which they worked with inherited modes from the late socialist era, specific cultural traditions, and the financial conditions in which they operated.

“I’m Here Because I Didn’t Want to Be There”: Miloš Forman’s and Ivan Passer’s Reflections on Being in Exile in the US

The essay examines the lives of two Czech film directors, Milos Forman and Ivan Passer, in order to investigate the roles of exile and emigration in shaping their self-representation as cinematic authors and their filmic production. To this end, this article analyzes the experience of the two filmmakers in the U.S. through the various forms of their testimonies—biographies, autobiographies, interviews—eventually engaging in a concise comparison of their oeuvre. The sources analyzed hint at a personal and professional self-representation in terms of ‘emigres.’

The Film Music of Luboš Fišer

Luboš Fišer (1935–1999) was a prominent and original composer of the twentieth century. All his life, he worked as a freelance composer of classical music and film music. He combined these two fields, and in both he won a number of Czech and international awards. The article surveys Fišer’s film music from four decades (1960s–1990s) in the context of the music of other Czech composers, and it relies on the collection of source material from Luboš Fišer’s estate kept at the Czech Museum of Music, which was subjected to continuous comparison with available film databases. Fišer collaborated with important Czech film directors and took part in making many television series. He was able to compose original music for any film genre and to make his music into a dramaturgically substantive, full-fledged component of a cinematographic work.

A New Ecosystem of Czech Documentary Production in the 90s

The paradoxical relations between Czech documentary filmmakers and institutions established after the Velvet revolution are identified as key aspects of a new ecosystem characterizing Czech documentary in the 90s. This paper focuses on the field which – together with the Czech film industry as a whole – lost state support in 1989. The documentaries were produced only due to efforts of individual entrepreneurs who started their own film businesses, although such activity remained illegal till 1993. Also, young FAMU students started to develop a new structure for supporting Czech documentary production in the late 90s. The main methodology of the paper relies on Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory, enriched by the ethnographic approach of John Caldwell, using semi-structured interviews with key personnel and analysing un/published texts. Emotional layers of interviews and personal relationships are considered as the most important attributes for the articulation of key paradoxes and conflicts within the Czech documentary field.

Cinematic Representation of the Roma’s Social Position and Mobility: A Comparative Analysis of Two Czech and Slovak Feature Films

Abstract The focus of this article is on two Czech and Slovak films, My Friend Fabián (Můj přítel Fabián, 1955) and Gypsy (Cigán, 2011). While the former emerged in the 1950s, in the period of socialist industrialisation, the latter was released in the period of post-socialist consolidation of capitalism. Theoretically this article relies on a mix of approaches from film studies, social anthropology, post-colonial studies and archival research. The central research question is how cinematic representation of Roma were approached in the past and how they have changed over time. The film My Friend Fabián is replete with colonial tropes of uninhibited dancing, singing and exotica stereotypes and depicts imaginary Roma as incompetent individuals who are subject to the paternalistic care of the White socialist functionaries. At the same time this film presents a viable model for Roma integration and social advancement via education and full-fledged integration into the working class. In contrast, the film Gypsy is much more respectful towards Roma, contemporary performers and characters are real Roma and their film destinies are realistic. But the world that surrounds film characters is the world of total racial exclusion, which offers no hope and no prospects whatsoever for Roma and their social advance.

Limiting the unlimited: curation in Czech film distribution in the digital era

The study assesses the impact of the digitalization of film projection and the rise of online distribution on the choice of films available to viewers in Czechia from 2007 to the present. It briefly summarizes debates on the availability of films in the digital era and examines implications of these debates for the small markets of Central and Eastern Europe. The first part of analysis focuses on theatrical distribution. It demonstrates that the selection of films available in Czech cinemas has widened after the digitalization of film projection, however, with a disproportionately high prevalence of domestic and European films and to the detriment of non-European non-US films. The second part explores through a case study of the VOD portal AeroVOD the offerings provided by Czech online distribution and concludes that they are shaped by similar principles as those governing theatrical distribution. Furthermore, the analysis shows that older films are scarcely included in the VOD catalogue, which is understandable from the perspective of industrial logic but hardly provides the abundance of films originally promised by online distribution. Subsequent analysis shows how festival awards influence the availability of films in Czech distribution.

Classifying Czech melodrama: Mrs. Morality sweeps through the protectorate

In 1998, the Czech National Film Archive (Národní filmový archive/NFA) classified sixty-seven feature-length fiction films produced between 1930 and 1945 as generic melodramas in their volumes of Czech Feature Film (Český hraný film). This essay considers how this retrospective genre classification offers entry into understanding melodrama’s aesthetic and cultural operations in Czech cinema. The focus is less on how the NFA defined the genre, than how these volumes, in bringing melodrama into critical view, reveal important assumptions about its cultural and historical affiliations with foreign co-productions. Starting by outlining some of the problems presented by the volumes of Czech Feature Film, this essay highlights some key questions that emerge in studying the complicated relationship between Czech and German popular film genres. In particular, it focuses on melodrama’s relationship to films made during the Nazi occupation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, when films were necessarily co-produced with the Nazified film industry. Through a close reading and reception study of Saturday (Sobota, Václav Wasserman, 1945) this essay considers how the perception of melodrama films as light entertainment during the Nazi occupation provided yet another opportunity for these films on Czechoslovak state television during the post-1968 period of normalization.

Food Porn in Titus Andronicus, Chocolat and I Served the King of England (Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále)

Abstract This essay studies scenes that focus on food and eating in the films Chocolat (2000) and I Served the King of England (Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále, 2006). To assess whether or not they constitute food porn we compare and contrast such scenes with the description of an unwholesome recipe for cannibalistic eating in Titus Andronicus, which anticipates our contemporary food obsession. At its most basic (and controversial), food porn names the alluring visualisation of certain foodstuffs, which renders food the object of erotically tinged desire. Serving different purposes in the two films, such eroticisation of food can be more than self-referential insofar as it indicates human interactions framed as power relations. Showing chocolate making and eating, in Chocolat, actually visualises a woman’s exertion of power over the women and their husbands in a bigoted French village in 1959, intended to awaken the people’s benumbed desire. Not food proper is the object of desire in the Czech film, but the young woman served up as ocular side dish to the moguls dining in a stylish Prague restaurant before the outburst of WWII. By contrast, food eroticisation is completely absent in Shakespeare; at stake is a verbal (and implicitly visual) concern with the transformation of flesh and body parts into ingredients for seemingly festive consumption. Visualising food, in Titus, implicitly visualises the reclaim and exertion of power in the fictional Roman polity. In all these cases, the concern with food vectorises power relations and may fluidise gendered hierarchies, an issue which food porn scholarship rarely addresses.

O wielogatunkowości filmów pełnometrażowych Jana Švankmajera

On genre-crossing in Jan Švankmajer’s feature filmsJan Švankmajer, a Czech film director and artist is known mostly for his short animated films. In 1994, however, a change in his filmmaking career took place — he devoted himself to working only on feature films. This change of medium is connected both to the length of these films, and using language, narration and genre features typical of feature films. What is important, Švankmajer does not adjust his artistic visions to all the directives of a certain genre. Rather, the director chooses some elements of these genres, and creates new, hybrid qualities. Genres that have the biggest impact on his feature films are: horror, comedy, and speculative fiction.

The Avant-Garde Aesthetic of Vojtěch Mašek

Vojtěch Mašek, a graduate of the Czech film school FAMU, is not a traditional cartoonist. Given that his wide-ranging interests have led him to collaborations in film, theater, anthropology, and literature, he has been relatively free to invent his own unique aesthetic and approach to comics. Whether working in fiction or in a more documentary vein, however, what makes Mašek's work unusual is the way that he revives and recuperates an avant-garde sensibility in his graphic narrative. Mašek is drawn to stories about monstrosity—some figurative, like Fred Brunold's "melancholic freakshow" in Monstrkabaret Freda Brunolda uvádí [Fred Brunold's Monster Cabaret presents] (2004–2008), which he co-wrote with Džian Baban, and others literal, in the case of mistreated minorities and dark episodes in Czech history (see O přibjehi [Stories] (2010) about Roma in the Czech Republic and the series Nejisté domovy [Precarious Homes] (2015) about children from orphanages and other institutions). This fascination with cruelty and the absurd is expressed through his use of collage, repetition, intertextual references, and unconventional page layouts, all of which renders his work highly unusual and experimental. From an ideological standpoint, Mašek's work is quite subversive, as these stories undermine standard assumptions about who is marked as "deviant" and what is considered "normal." This essay analyzes how Mašek develops his avant-garde aesthetic in the Monstrkabaret trilogy, which is primarily fictional but reflects historical realities, and compares this to his later work 1952: Jak Gottwald zavraždil Slánského [How Gottwald Murdered Slansky], (2014), which is historical in focus but elaborated with fictional details.

Ostalgia in Czech Films about Normalisation Created Post-1989

This piece will introduce Czech ostalgic films set in the normalisation period (1969–1989) and will interpret the basic divide between nostalgic representation of the period and the openly anti-communist stances of the films’ creators. The methodological frame of this research comes from Robert Rosenstone’s approach of representation of history in film. To interpret ostalgia in Czech film, I use ideas from Daphne Berdhal and Svetlana Boym. I described the nostalgic elements and their functions in the structure of the films, taking into account their story, characters, settings, film style, narration, genre, and audience response (identification, causality of emotional experience). Czech ostalgic films about the normalisation period are interpretively ambivalent. The interpretational tension appears out of a fundamental divide between a clear refusal of communism and an idyllic view of the socialist past. They cannot be simply classified into restorative or reflective nostalgia. The younger generation of spectators perceives ostalgic films in the mode of reflective nostalgia; on the other hand, the older generation perceive the films in terms of restorative nostalgia. A different way of perceiving ostalgia reveals a misunderstanding between generations of the current Czech society. Due to singular anti-communist viewpoints and emphasised liberal values, the films cannot be interpreted in a desire for an idealised home in a communist past, but as a desire for a present home and its security, which cannot be clearly conceptualised. The concept of reflective nostalgia can be linked with the theory of Berdhal. The films cannot be perceived as a desire for an idealised home in a communist past due to specific anti-communist viewpoints and highlighted liberal values, but as a need for a home and security that cannot be directly conceptualised. This appearance of reflective nostalgia can be connected with the theory stated by Berdhal.

A High Contrast Portrait. Representations of the Czech-German Borderland in Recent Czech Film and TV Productions

Iluminace is the only Czech double-blind peer-reviewed journal for scholarly reflection upon cinema which is approached from theoretical, historical and aesthetic perspectives. It emphasizes original research and interdisciplinary approaches and in recent years has focused on international authors and readers.

In search of authenticity: Věra Chytilová's films from two eras

Czech film maker Vera Chytilova was the first woman ever who was allowed to study film direction at FAMU, the Film Academy in Prague. She was an important member of the generation of the Czech New Wave of the 1960s. Particularly well known internationally is Chytilova's film Daisies, which is regarded by critics as a highly innovative contribution to world cinema. This article traces the history of Chytilová's artistic development through the liberal 1960s in communist Czechoslovakia, when film making was free of ideological and commercial pressures, and compares it with her work made in the 1970s and 1980s, in an era when Czechoslovak film makers were under ideological pressure and worked in a society which had adopted conformism and consumerism. While it would appear that Chytilová mostly gave up her bold stylistic experimentation in this period of ‘normalisation’, she never gave up her personal integrity and successfully communicated her moral concern even under conditions of strong censorship and bureaucratic pressure.

Love your neighbor: Nazi soldiers and Femmes Fatales in Czech cinema

Analysis of popular culture can offer a better understanding of spatial representations prevailing in the everyday discourse than the insights inferred from official statements or mainstream scientific textbooks. Our everyday thinking about Central European space might be significantly different from representations outlined in texts written by intellectuals and politicians. In fact, there is a telling absence of common features among representations of different Central European countries in Czech films. These representations shape the process of meaning-making and they can help us better grasp the position of a country in relation to its neighbors too. Except for Germany and Slovakia, other actors from the immediate vicinity are virtually non-existent in Czech visual popular culture. While Germans are mostly male Nazi soldiers, Slovakia is described as an underdeveloped, mountainous territory with oversupply of beautiful, vivacious women. Data from 50 box-office hits and critically acclaimed movies produced during the last 20 years illustrate this argument. Such a systematic study of popular culture is not only more revealing than a simple focus on a few illustrative artworks, but it also increases the added value of discourse analysis that pays attention to predication and membership categories.